"DirectX 10 is probably the most important revolution in games development, at least since the introduction of the programmable shader in DirectX 8.0. Because of the way that Microsoft has designed the new driver model, DirectX 10 will only be available for Windows Vista users and there will not be a version released for Windows XP. Along with DirectX 10, Windows Vista will come with DirectX 9.0Ex - this is because pre-DirectX 10 hardware will not work under the new API due to the complete overhaul."

That is not correct. There is nothing to dismay those that whish to use OpenGL on Vista since the *very* old news that OpenGL will be slower on Vista or suffer from other drawbacks just isn't actual anymore. Vista is going to get fully functional OpenGL.

Also, as nVidia has already shown, almost everything that is possible with DX10 is also possible already with OpenGL and missing functionality is only a matter of a newer OpenGL Version (i'm not sure if the bigger changes in functonality could be reproduced using OpenGLs extention mechanism).

Lastly, i don't see how SDL is involved. SDL is used to open an OpenGL window, offers functonality for multithreaded programming and if you want it also can handle input for you. SDL itself has no 3D functionality, just primitive access to an framebuffer which isn't even officially existent anymore in direct x since dx8. So unless DirectX 10 handles Keypresses in a very new and spectacular way, i don't even see any need for an modifyed SDL version execept if DX 10 can't handle DX9 input methods anymore which surely would be new to me.

There is nothing to dismay those that whish to use OpenGL on Vista since the *very* old news that OpenGL will be slower on Vista or suffer from other drawbacks just isn't actual anymore. Vista is going to get fully functional OpenGL.

Microsoft tried to do this, rather pathetically, but it just wasn't a practical. There's no reason why someone couldn't trivially implement OpenGL on Vista, perhaps even taking advantage of DirectX 10 itself, and get around any restrictions Microsoft had placed.

Of course. It is all about driver model. Linux is getting fairly big improvements in this area currently, while XP will probably see good OGL support for new DX10-like features because of good driver models developed by Nvidia and - maybe - ATI. Porting DX10 to XP, 2000 requires lots of work by MS on XPDM (backporting), but isn't impossible. They obviously chose not to go that way for multiple reasons, one of them is just forcing XP out of enthusiast machines ASAP.